Stephen Gaskin

Paradigm Shift Interview by Philip H. Farber

Stephen Gaskin is probably best known for his 1960s exploits in Haight-Ashbury that led to the
pilgrimage of 400 hippies across the country to found The Farm Community. He is also the
founder of The Rocinante Health Center Project and Plenty International, a relief organization
that has rebuilt houses and set up medical clinics throughout the world. As a teacher and author,
his books, including Cannabis Spirituality and Haight-Ashbury Flashbacks, have addressed the place of
spirituality
and mind-altering plants in our society.

Paradigm Shift caught up with Gaskin after the 1998 Starwood Festival, a
pagan/magickal/countercultural gathering that draws thousands of visitors to a Temporary
Autonomous Zone in western New York State every summer.

Philip H. Farber: What did you think of Starwood?

Stephen Gaskin: I like Starwood. I am not a pagan in any sense of being involved
with Celtic or Welsh or any particular school but I definitely am pagan in
the sense of someone who has never been roped and branded by any religion.
I am a freethinker.

I mean the pagans are very cute. I actually just consider them to be
a sub-species of hippies. They are all pierced and tattooed and long black
capes and horns and antlers and such. On the other hand they put the
aluminum with the aluminum, the clear glass with the clear glass, the brown
glass with the brown glass, the compost in the compost and the trash in the
trash. They love the world. I don't mean in the abstract, I mean the real
actual world

It is also really sweet to see people out in their skin, feeling
and being beautiful. I hope they also register to vote.

PHF: I think I probably fall into that same category. In general, do you think
that particular religious beliefs are a limitation? Or can they be
beneficial?

Stephen Gaskin: I think each of us has a non-shirkable obligation to figure out the world
on our own as best we can. The way we treat other people as a result of
that investigation is our true and practiced religion. Any paint-by-numbers
system that figures it out for you is an imposition on your intellect. Many
people are driven crazy trying to integrate some indigestible dogma into an
otherwise clean mind.

PHF: Hmmm... would someone recognize it if they were being driven crazy that way?
Any suggestions for someone who might find themselves in such a bind?

Stephen Gaskin: Here are two things I do for the sake of sanity. One of them it to always
tell yourself the truth about what you do in the plainest and most
unvarnished terms. It might not make you like your self but it will help
keep you from going crazy. Another important one is to never make any
important decisions on the basis of second hand psychic phenomena. I have
seen some stuff and I have heard some stuff, but I never pass on
second hand stuff as true. By second hand, I mean anything other than my
own experience.

My middle son Paul was very offended by the story of the prophet
Abraham going to sacrifice his son and the sacrificial goat being found
just in time.. He said "Why wasn't that child abuse?" He said that he would
have taken Abraham's knife away and told that old man that he better hope
for a goat. The clean eye of a child noticed that there was another actor
besides Abraham, the goat and God and that the tale acted like the child
was not a person. Every once in a while you hear of some poor deluded soul
who does something truly awful on instructions from god.

Could we set the plow a little deeper?

PHF: If there are any topics you'd particularly like to talk about
here, let me know... this isn't hard journalism...

Stephen Gaskin: I know this isn't hard Journalism but the Question stimulates the
Answer. I
want to break out a little. I don't want to be trapped like many young
people are today.

Assuming Dogmatic opinions as a young person puts one in the position of
having receptors for certain ideas . When such a person goes into the
world, the world that they encounter is pre-conditioned by the idea
receptors. The Dogmatic opinions are the other end of the receptors. Some
young people go into the world bristling with opinions like a porcupine and
promptly get something stuck on each quill. At this point all learning
stops unless there is some great cleansing of mind. All the opinions having
met their mate, the young mind's learning receptors are stuffed with things
which are after all only extentions of opinions already held.

Your honest questions help me break out in to new territory

PHF: Ah... I like that. In what ways have you experienced such a cleansing? Do
you believe there's a way to invite such a cleansing?

Here's one way. When I met my wife, she told me that I knew
absolutely nothing about women but that she loved me anyway and if I would
just shut up and be good she would teach me. She asked what I thought she
was in relation to me. I said "It looks to me like you must be my teacher."

I had some more of that from Acid and hanging out with honest young
people. There must be millions of who have been that route.

When I was in college I knew this guy who was a full time
party-boy, beer-head, girl-chaser and man about town. One evening he and his
best drinking buddy were in a drunken car wreck that killed his friend. He
hung upside down for half the night next to his dead friend before he was
discovered and rescued. He quit drinking, opened a pizza parlor, got
married, settled down and had babies and prospered. I don't recommend this
route but if it the one you are on, do your homework and learn your
lessons. Otherwise, it is a terrible waste.

It is a sobering thing to realize that "My God! I have been full of
shit most of my life!".

(FEEL FREE TO TRY A HARD QUESTION. AT THE LEAST, YOU WILL SEE A GOOD
TAP
DANCE AND MAYBE I MIGHT NAIL IT.)

PHF: Hmmm... the only questions I really consider to be hard are the big questions, like
"What is
the nature of consciousness?"

Stephen Gaskin: Try this

Consciousness, in a way, is a function of soul, the spark of
godhood that is indwelling

"Beauty, in the flesh, is but a spark,
the fitful tracing of a portal..
but in the flesh it is immortal"

About Soul, I think the poet, Yeats, meant that beauties grow old
and die but beauty lives on as long as beauties live on, "in the flesh it
is immortal.

I do believe in immortal soul in this fashion.

Length, width, depth, and time, the four dimensions of material
reality must be apprehended by soul which preexists and is eternal. Hence,
immortal soul. It is not that soul doesn't die that is important, but that
it always lives and is that against which time is measured. Soul is that
which notices that time passes and therefore must have a referent in
another place, which is eternity.

I am sure of soul, I am just not sure if I can call it my own in any
but the most temporary sense. To me the soul question is like the light
problem. Is light a ray or a particle? Is it my soul or just soul stuff?.

If you put a bunch of soul together does it remain in particles like BBs or
just all flow together like water?

PHF: While my mind continues to boggle on this one, I'll pose a more
practical question...

Are you aware of the initiative in California to get cannabis legalized for
religious use? (The group responsible for this has some resources online at
http://www.snowcrest.net/swtlight) Do you
think this is a worthwhile way to
pursue legalization?

Stephen Gaskin: I am actually one of the sponsors of that action. Guy Mount invited me
in.
I believe in Cannabis Spirituality.(forgive the plug)

It is not a question of either or. We should try medical,
industrial, recreational, religious, 1st amendment, 14th amendment, 9th
amendment anything else on the books. What I do with my own mind is not
their business and as long as they stay riding on the backs of the people I
am their dedicated and full time opponent. The critics say that medical
cannabis advocates think it just should be completely legal. My answer to
that is, "Your point?" We are in the open, I am not hiding. If it can help
one AIDS victim eat, that is worth it. If it can save one tree, that is
worth while. If it can help people unwind from work mode to family mode,
(and it does) then that is worth it.

PHF: I'll ask you what I asked Robert Anton Wilson in the last issue: Under what terms,
if
any, would you like to see cannabis legalized? Any age restrictions?
Marketing restrictions? Taxation?

Stephen Gaskin: I think a mix of loose and tight. I don't just say legalize it
because I don't want to see the big tobacco companies step in and take over
and advertise and make money off of our sacrament. Cannabis needs no
advertising.

I don't think the growing and selling or trading of pot in moderate
amounts among friends should be regulated at all. During alcohol
prohibition, there was an allowance for people who had wine as a part of
their culture and diet. It was called a "Head of the household allowance."
It was 600 gallons.

For large amounts I think of a state store like Oregon State Liquor
stores. A plain building without advertising and government regulated low
retail prices for medical or recreational pot.

All pot prisoners who are not complicated with guns, violence or
hard drugs should have amnesty and immediate release and purging of their
criminal records.

I actually think that decriminalizing cocaine would confound the
cokelords more than anything else but that is not this fight.
Decriminalizing cannabis should be allowed to run for a few years without
complicating it, to learn how to do it. If it works good, possibly an
expansion could be considered.

I wouldn't mind a moderate tax in the state stores if it could be
dedicated to education or helping fund Medicare or something worthwhile.
Absolutely no taxation at the personal or medical level.

By the way, did I tell you that I am going to run for president on
decriminalizing pot? I will put my platform here...

Plank 1: Universal Health Care. Everyone gets taken care
of while we argue about the money. Plank 2: Campaign Finance Reform. The Airwaves belong to
the people. The networks will get off of enough of them for the
people to run their elections, free. Plank 3: Decriminalize Marijuana and Amnesty for all
simple pot prisoners who are not involved with guns or hard drugs. Plank 4: Let's Educate the Kids and quit fighting about it. Plank 5: A Corporation is Not a Person.

My idea is to put the subject of reefer law on the table and to
make the debate public. I thought I could be as much of a pain in the
ass as Ross Perot, but for a good cause.

I think Perot's 18 million or whatever it was is about half as many
as there are pot smokers in the United States. I want to show them
that our constituency is large and intelligent and worthy of
consideration. People from several states who were at the 4:20,
said that they would work for me in their states.

PHF: How do you hope to finance the campaign and get on the ballots?

Stephen Gaskin: In the first place, my presidential candidacy will not even try to compete
financially. That would be the first trap. I am going to rely on my good
hippy karma. I am quite well known among hippies and the youth. I am also
going to rely on the truth and sanity of my positions. I have been
crisscrossing this continent for 28 years. My books have sold about half a
million, and books related to my work have sold several millions. Rather
than purchasing time on the air, I will try to be a good enough story to be
carried as news. I will be using the Internet and web pages and I hope to
have the help of people like you, Phil, who inhabit the underground media.
We have been building a system for years. On my road trips, I usually talk
on the local public access station and I have friends from coast to coast
on that circuit.

I intend to put the pot question on the table. I want all
candidates for all offices to be asked what have they done for reefer
sanity in the USA.

Al Gore was the young reporter who did the first big local story on us. We
have known him for 25 years. I sometimes have a column in the paper that he
used to work for. I will announce in that column. I think the wire services
will think that situation is cute enough to carry the story.

This is a literal and metaphorical grass roots effort. My e-mail address is
Stephen7@usit.net and I
welcome comments, offers of
help and being
forwarded to your lists. I know that I am a regular on all the best hippy
gossip circuits. I ask their permission for my presidential candidacy to be
carried on that net as well.